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Wesley Snipes recently returned to screens in his iconic role as vampire Daywalker Blade, and fans of the actor have now latched onto one of his panned 90s movies, the political thriller, Murder at 1600. Having joined the Tubi library earlier this month, the film has jumped into the free streamer’s Top 10, and seems to be holding steady there despite the lack of love shown to it on its original release in 1997.

Directed by Dwight H. Little and starring Snipes and Diane Lane, Murder at 1600 tells the story of a tense and deadly investigation that begins with a murder inside the White House. Detective Harlan Regis (Snipes) is thrown into a battle against a corrupt government, and a shadowy conspiracy that could reach all the way to the top of the political power tree. Like many action movies of the decade, the film leans into several familiar tropes and twists,...

After many years of a varied theater, dance and film career, Roxanne Messina Captor will be directing her script “Pearl” starring Juliette Binoche along with Leehom Wang (“Blackhat”) and Jing Tian (“Great Wall”). Based upon the life of Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winner Pearl S. Buck, who was in China during the upheaval of the 1920s. The story follows the “Ten Years Civil War” which took place between the Communists and Nationalists after the Nanking Incident of 1927. Her family escaped Nanking with the help of her family’s nanny and moved to Shanghai. She left China in 1934 and never returned.

Buck won the Pulitzer Prize in 1931 for her novel “The Good Earth,” about the struggle of Chinese farmers, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938, “for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces.” She also wrote “Peony” a deeply moving romance about the last Jew in K’aifeng in the province of Hunan.

The 1937 movie “The Good Earth” starred Paul Muni and Luise Rainer, who won an Academy Award for best actress.

During the Beijing Film Festival 2012, writer/ producer/ director Roxanne Messina Captor tied in China Film Group to co-finance and co-produce her project. About 85% of the film will be shot in China.

Binoche, who won an Oscar for “The English Patient,” recently starred in “Clouds of Sils Maria” and will be seen next in Mike Medavoy’s mining rescue drama “The 33″ opposite Antonio Banderas. She’s repped by CAA and Untitled Entertainment. Roxanne and the project are also repped by CAA.

Roxanne has also been invited by the Pearl Buck foundation to present her research paper on Buck in the Pearl Buck Symposium to be held in Zhenjiang early September. This is Pearl’s hometown and museum.

“Pearl” is scheduled to start production in 2016 in Zhejiang Province, Shanghai and Prague. Vilmos Zsigmond has been attached as the cinematographer.

"I found so many parallels in Pearl's life. At twelve I followed my two professional passions, writing and dancing. Both stayed with me as my career expanded to directing. Pearl and I believe anything can manifest with passion and determination."

A Juilliard Theater School graduate, Roxanne Messina Captor was with Chicago Lyric Opera Ballet, Harkness Ballet, New York Metropolitan Opera Ballet and performed as a guest artist with Rudolph Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. She has performed On and Off Broadway under the direction of Bob Fosse, Michael Bennett, Uta Hagen, Robert Lewis (Yale Repertory Theatre).

As a theatre director and choreographer working in Regional and Off-Broadway theatre. Francis Ford Coppola chose Captor to assist Gene Kelly with the choreography of "One From the Heart." She danced in the films “Cotton Club”, "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," "Xanadu" and "Pennies From Heaven. Other film producing and directing include: Emmy-nominated "Home Sweet Homeless”, "A Clean Kill” starring Daniel Benzali, “Her Married Lover” prime time premiere Lifetime Television. "Dead On Sight,” starring Jennifer Beals, and Oscar nominated William H. Macy ("Fargo").

In 2001 she was the Executive Director of the San Francisco International Film Festival and one of the few Americans to moderate a panel at the Havana International Film Festival. She received international recognition and was awarded the prestigious Chevalier du Ordre des Arts and Lettres, Republic of France in 2005. One of the original programming executives who formed Turner Network Television.

A girl jumps from a bridge in the night. Next day, Cal (Tim Roth) talks with Emily ( Hayley McFarland) in the car and happens to pass the same bridge, getting stuck in traffic. Of course being Cal, he has to be curious and talks with a policeman, who from his gestures and evasion concludes there was a suicide. He notices Gail (Megan Dods) from the Us Attorney's office who used to work with his ex wife. She tells him the girl also had a sister who committed suicide a few days earlier. He's not deterred and can't stop himself from getting involved. Emily asking him that he used to study suicides. He still does. Cal talks with Arun (Sunkrish Bala) the sisters' brother and mother. Cal still recalls some Hindi and their mother, who is beside herself asks why they did this? Arun says his sisters stayed on in the...

After decades of relationship drama, mob wars, and general angst, General Hospital’s Brenda and Sonny finally said their “I do’s” this week. And it couldn’t have come any sooner for Vanessa Marcil Giovinazzo, the Daytime Emmy Award winning actress who created the role of Brenda in 1992 and returned to it last summer after an 8-year absence. She recently sat down with us to talk about Brenda, Sonny, Carly, and Jason.

So it finally happened!

Vmg: I know! Brenda’s like the female James Bond. Her weddings never happen. She’s just forever single. So it happens, they end up marrying,...

Filed under: Reality-Free, TV Previews

"Marriage is death," as the saying goes, for soap opera couples, meaning that head writers often find it difficult to come up with story and conflict for happily wed duos. But the scribes at 'General Hospital' don't appear to have that problem with star-crossed lovers Sonny and Brenda, who are due to tie the knot today.

Several obstacles stand before the duo. First, there's Carly, Sonny's vengeful ex-wife, who is determined to tell Sonny that Brenda gave birth to his own grandchild in order to make sure that the wedding doesn't happen.

And then there's Maude Adrienne Barbeau, aka Brenda's "pal" Suzanne. In reality she and her husband, the Balkan (Daniel Benzali), are the parents of the man whom Brenda killed. They've vowed to get even!

Finally, there's Franco (played by James Franco), who is obsessed with destroying Jason. What better way to...

What a jaw-dropper! We all know that General Hospital's Theo Hoffman (Daniel Benzali) — aka The Balkan — is a bald-acious badass intent on ruining the upcoming Sonny-Brenda nuptials. What we didn't know, until Tuesday's cliffhanger, is that the creep also has a secret wife — it's Brenda's good pal Suzanne, played by Adrienne Barbeau! TV Guide Magazine grilled the former Maude star about this stunning revelation and how it'll affect her future in Port Charles.

Watch full episodes of General Hospital

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Oh, but there’s nothing better than a big wedding in daytime. There’s also nothing better when “enemies of the past” swoop in and put a serious damper on the festivities. Will General Hospital’s Sonny and Brenda make it through the vows? Will they cut the cake without incident? Will there even be a honeymoon? And can Daniel Benzali look any more creepy?

Feast your eyes, soap fans, on this first look of the promo:

The countdown to matrimonial bliss begins this Friday, Feb. 18 and runs next week on the ABC sudser.

Will it finally happen this time? General Hospital heroine Brenda Barrett (Vanessa Marcil Giovinazzo) — whose past wedding days have all been disasters — is scheduled to marry crime lord Sonny Corinthos (Maurice Benard) on February 18. Right now things don't look so good for the duo. Sonny is being haunted by prophetic dreams that something will go heinously wrong at the ceremony. His venomous ex-wife Carly (Laura Wright) plans to ruin the big day by revealing that Brenda has a secret past — and a child — with Sonny's son Dante (Dominic Zamprogna). And supervillain The Balkan (Daniel Benzali) also intends to be a party pooper — he's all set to kidnap the bride. Despite all this, head writer Bob Guza assures us that vows will be exchanged...

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Daniel Benzali is sampling the playground that James Franco also continues to visit.

Probable "127 Hours" Oscar nominee Franco is slated to return to ABC's weekday staple "General Hospital" just before he co-hosts (with Anne Hathaway) the 83rd Annual Academy Awards next month ... but famously bald "Murder One" veteran Benzali is on the serial now.

He's playing the Balkan, a mystery man whose presence suggests bad things are in store for bride-to-be Brenda Barrett (Vanessa Marcil Giovinazzo).

"It's just a matter of doing different things and keeping going," Benzali tells Zap2it about entering daytime drama after appearing on "Nip/Tuck" and "Lie to Me," among other primetime shows. "Whatever strikes my fancy, a script or an idea that comes in, I'm really open to trying it."

That's close to the British approach to acting, which makes sense since Benzali also has worked in England for many years.

"What's great about being an actor over there,...

Some of you saw it coming. A lot of you didn't. Whatever the case, last Friday's General Hospital cliffhanger couldn't have been more delicious! Theo Hoffman, the cranky hypochondriac who is suing the hospital for malpractice, was revealed to be the Balkan! This international crime lord — played by the terrific Daniel Benzali of Murder One fame — seems to be seeking revenge on supermodel Brenda Barrett for the death of his son and now he's secretly wormed his way onto her legal team. It's fabulously creepy! TV Guide Magazine had an exclusive chat with Benzali, who gave us a tantalizing hint of doom to come.

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Heather Locklear Hospitalized

Locklear recently checked into an L.A.-area hospital with a bacterial infection, her rep confirmed to UsMagazine.com.

Michael Urie cast in TBS pilot

Brain Trust centers on disgraced police detective Billy Doyle whose work is helped and hindered by a brilliant, strange and lovable trio of uber-geeks from a local think tank: Professor Nelson Kirb Professor Franklin Gordon (Urie) and Professor Monica Ashton.

“Gilmore Girls Companion” Preview

Several sample pages from the book have been released, which includes an episode-by-episode look at the series as well as many exclusive interviews.

The Vampire Diaries: Six teasers from executive producer Julie Plec

The CW soap returns Thursday with its final two episodes of the year, which will be full of werewolves, love triangles and no doubt a few surprises.

Valerie Harper visits Desperate Housewives

When Lesley Ann Warren returns to Desperate Housewives for the first time...

We showed you a first look of Daniel Benzali on ABC’s General Hospital: Now here’s an exclusive sneak peek of his appearance, which begins Dec. 6. Benzali will play Theo, a hypochondriac patient who befriends Dr. Robin Scorpio (Kimberly McCullough) in her time of need. This scene also includes Scott Reeves as Dr. Steven Webber and Jason Thompson as Dr. Patrick Drake.

Benzali’s story arc will stretch well into 2011.

Kimberlin Brown still enjoys acting (and golf)

"I’m really loving South Africa. The people are great. It’s going to be really sad leaving to go back to Los Angeles (today),” said Brown who was appearing at the Gary Player Invitational golf tournament. "I still enjoy acting but I’m also very involved in American Airlines Celebrity, which supports the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and the Susan G Komen Foundation for Breast Cancer."

Jeff Branson's I Spit On Your Grave coming to Blu-Ray on February 8

Branson stars in this graphic, shocking and undeniably disturbing new take on one of the most controversial films of all time.

Larry Bryggman starring in "The Collection & A Kind of Alaska: Two Plays by Harold Pinter"

Previews began on November 3 (tonight is opening night) and the show runs through December 19.

UK: TV drama 'misleading about mental health'

Television dramas too often give frightening and...

Gee, I miss Murder One. But if I can’t have the old legal drama back, then it looks like General Hospital is the place to go to get a Daniel Benzali fix these days. The ABC sudser lassoed the veteran actor for a generous story arc that will stretch well into 2011. EW obtained this exclusive peek at Benzali’s first day on the set, which will air Monday, Dec. 6. Benzali will play Theo, a hypochondriac patient who befriends Dr. Robin Scorpio (Kimberly McCullough) in her time of need. Also pictured is Scott Reeves as Dr. Steven Webber and Jason Thompson as Dr.

Plus "30 Rock" live episode news and a new face at "General Hospital's" Port Charles General.

 

Dana Delany's new medical examiner drama on ABC, "Body of Proof," is moving to midseason. The network feels the show could succeed in a more high-profile timeslot than its originally scheduled time of Friday nights at 9 p.m. Perhaps it will replace the Maura Tierney-Rob Morrow legal drama "The Whole Truth," whose ratings are less-than-stellar so far. [Variety]

HBO's original movie based on bestselling Wall Street expose "Too Big To Fail" has announced an all-star cast that includes Paul Giamatti, Topher Grace, Ed Asner, Tony Shalhoub, James Woods and Cynthia Nixon. [Live Feed]

Daniel Benzali ("Jericho," "Murder One") is heading to "General Hospital" to play the role of patient Theo Hoffman. First seen Dec. 6, the character will be admitted to the hospital and develop a friendship with troubled heroine Robin Scorpio (Kimberly McCullough). But...

The much-acclaimed actor Daniel Benzali (Jericho, Murder One, NYPD Blue) is heading to General Hospital to play the role of patient Theo Hoffman.

First seen December 6, the character will be admitted to the hospital and develop a friendship with troubled heroine Robin Scorpio (Kimberly McCullough). But an ABC rep tells us "there is more to Theo than meets the eye."

In recent months...

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Given the fact that, including myself, there are four regular writers at Pajiba who are also lawyers (two of whom actually practice -- Seth and The Boozehound), I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me before to put together an Srl on the best legal shows. I suspect that, of the four of us, I'm the only one that watches legal dramas with any regularity, but despite the proliferation of them, I still can't resist a particularly good one.

Unfortunately, good ones are rare. There have been close to 90 legal shows in the history of television that have made it longer than six episodes, not even including those where the law is tangentially related (like Picket Fences or dozens of cop shows). Of those, however, I imagine only 20 or so ever actually made it to a second season, so it's something of a mystery to me why the networks...

David Arquette is set to shock cinema-goers with one of his first serious roles - but he's convinced the public will be impressed. Arquette, who usually plays comic roles, has taken on the part of a sonderkommando Jew in the Nazi concentration camp drama The Grey Zone. And director Tim Blake Nelson says Arquette's performance as one of the jews forced to work in the crematoria of Auschweitz is "nothing short of amazing." Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi and Daniel Benzali co-star, but Nelson says, "David plays probably the most vulnerable of the four. His performance is exquisite and soulful. I had always felt that David's humor was based on a certain level of shame; that the characters he played in comic terms were always falling short of who they wanted to be. And the Sonderkommandos, by every account I've read, were almost drowning in shame."...

Although Universal Pictures' "Screwed" aspires to slapstick situation comedy in the Marx Brothers tradition, the film, like its lead characters, comes unglued almost from the start and never has a chance to live up to the heights of its comedic predecessors.

The directorial debut of screenwriting duo Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski ("The People vs. Larry Flynt", "Man on the Moon"), "Screwed" is tripped up not so much by a moronic plot as by an overall shrillness that not even headliners Norm Macdonald and Dave Chappelle, comedic wizards they might be, can pull off.

Macdonald and Chappelle play bumbling, idiot extortionists who yell 90% of their dialogue. For sure, the 1930s and '40s flicks that inspired the filmmakers often featured shouting matches between characters, but the gimmick falls flat here. Movies of the past decade such as "The Impostors" and "Radioland Murders" are proof enough that even savvy filmmakers like Stanley Tucci and George Lucas have similarly hit a brick wall trying to re-create that zany energy and snappy dialogue -- in full-blown period productions, no less.

"Screwed" opens with the introduction of Willard (Macdonald), chauffeur and all-purpose servant to wealthy matron Miss Crock (Elaine Stritch), owner and operator of a pastry company in Pittsburgh. The monstrous Crock and her dog Muffin make life miserable for Willard, whose father also worked for the nasty woman. Needless to say, her hateful, vindictive nature is something no sane person would choose to be around for 15 minutes -- let alone a lifetime.

But Willard is a congenital coward and self-defeating sneak who glumly accepts his lot -- until he learns he's about to be canned. He then hatches a plan to kidnap Muffin and ransom the mutt for $1 million. He talks restaurant-owning Rusty (Chappelle) into becoming his accomplice, and, after a few botched attempts, the pair appears to succeed.

Of course, the would-be thugs lose track of Muffin instantly, all the while yelling about how they're going to spend the money. Willard and Rusty don't even realize the dog is gone until they hear breaking news reports of the chauffeur's kidnapping. Changing plans in a hurry, they decide to demand $5 million from Crock for Willard, then go the whole nine yards by faking Willard's death with help from undertaker Grover Cleaver (Danny DeVito).

Other unfortunates caught up in the increasingly unfunny farce are a detective (Daniel Benzali) so unamused he seems more like the studio accountant, Crock's scheming business and personal partner (Sherman Hemsley) and Willard's poorly drawn love interest (Sarah Silverman).

DeVito gets some of the biggest laughs, and Stritch supplies one overbearing note through this concerto of misery that at least has the sense to call it quits at 82 minutes.

"Screwed" -- released wide Friday without advance screenings for critics and, not surprisingly, performing dismally -- is not even the first film to use the title; Alexander Crawford's 1996 documentary "Screwed", about multimedia pornographer Al Goldstein, had a limited release. Nor can the failed comedy be called the season's most legendary disaster -- that title already belongs to Warners' "Battlefield Earth", also released Friday.

SCREWED

Universal Pictures

A Robert Simonds/Brad Grey production

Screenwriter-directors: Scott Alexander,

Larry Karaszewski

Producer: Robert Simonds

Executive producers: Brad Grey, Ray Reo

Director of photography: Robert Brinkmann

Production designer: Mark Freeborn

Editor: Michael Jablow

Costume designer: Maya Mani

Music: Michael Colombier

Color/stereo

Cast:

Willard Fillmore: Norm Macdonald

Rusty P. Hayes: Dave Chappelle

Miss Crock: Elaine Stritch

Grover Cleaver: Danny DeVito

Detective Tom Dewey: Daniel Benzali

Chip Oswald: Sherman Hemsley

Hillary: Sarah Silverman

Running time -- 82 minutes

MPAA rating: PG-13...

While it might make an amusing opening film for a vegetarian film festival, "All the Little Animals" is a hopeless muddle for a general release. This uninvolving tale of two mental misfits whose mission is to protect all animal life from destruction by man has no apparent audience. After sitting on a shelf for a year after its premiere at the last Toronto Film Festival, the English film is getting a brief theatrical exposure by Lions Gate Films.

"Animals" film marks the directorial debut of Oscar-winning producer Jeremy Thomas. While he has been associated in his career with such luminaries as Bernardo Bertolucci, Stephen Frears, David Cronenberg, Nicolas Roeg and Karel Reisz, no directorial magic has rubbed off.

As the producer, though, Thomas has assembled a top team of craftsmen to make a competent film. But the simplistic and sentimental tale is pitched in strident black-and-white terms that won't carry the day.

Adapted from Walker Hamilton's novel by Thomas' wife, Eski Thomas, the screenplay focuses on a man-child named Bobby (Christian Bale), never fully recovered from a childhood head trauma. After his mother's death, he falls into the clutches of a sinister stepfather named DeWinter, played with such evil relish by Daniel Benzali that Dickens would wince. (After all, Dickens invested his villains with color and wit.)

Running away from his baronial home, Bobby soon finds himself in the company of Mr. Summers (John Hurt), an eccentric hermit whose love for animals causes him to spend his days burying road kill along the rural highways of Cornwall while cursing the careless motorists who run the creatures down.

The film then shudders to a halt dramatically to bear witness to any number of animal burials, rodent feedings and loving close-ups of bugs worthy of a National Geographic special. To jump-start the story again, a highly coincidental run-in with an employee of DeWinter at a holiday beach provokes the fear in Bobby that his stepfather will come looking for him.

So he confides in Mr. Summers, who comes up with the very bad idea of returning to London for a confrontation with DeWinter. This leads to considerable brutality, none of which is convincing or properly motivated.

Thomas appears to want to turn this strange story into a modern-day fairy tale. But the literal-mindedness of his filmmaking works against this ambition. Not helping matters is the film's curious notion that while all animal life is sacred, human problems can be resolved through violence.

Bale and Hurt do reasonable jobs of portraying characters that are more symbolic than flesh and blood. But both are forced to play the superficial tics of mental aberration to the hilt since there's precious else to these characters.

Technical credits are solid, with cinematographer Mike Molloy getting good mileage out of the glorious British countryside, some of which appears to have been shot on the Isle of Man.

ALL THE LITTLE ANIMALS

Lions Gate Films

Recorded Picture Co.

Producer-director: Jeremy Thomas

Writer: Eski Thomas

Based on the novel by: Walker Hamilton

Director of photography: Mike Molloy

Production designer: Andrew Sanders

Music: Richard Hartley

Costume designer: Louise Stjernsward

Editor: John Victor Smith

Color/stereo

Cast:

Mr. Summers: John Hurt

Bobby: Christian Bale

DeWinter: Daniel Benzali

Mr. Whiteside: James Faulkner

Lorry Driver: John O'Toole

Running time -- 110 minutes

MPAA rating: R...

"The End of Violence" is the beginning of not much of anything in Wim Wenders' much-anticipated film, playing here in competition.

It's a simplistic filmic essay centering on Los Angeles-style mayhem -- Rodney King, O.J., movie violence, riots, gangsta rap, etc. -- filtered through a B-movie/babe city apprehension of Southern California. U.S. domestic distribution should be limited to the fringes of the art house circuit for this ambitious, but underdeveloped, entertainment.

Weaving an Altman-esque, contextual yarn, screenwriter Nicholas KIein has fashioned a multicharacter drama that revolves around the Los Angeles area, from South Central to Beverly Hills. In this crafty, if facile, delineation, the narrative centers around a nefarious governmental attempt to establish a big-brother like camera system that will allow law enforcement to more readily respond to 911s. Indicative of the scenario's homage-to-movies limitation, this big-time surveillance sysem is set up -- where else? -- in the Grifffith Park Observatory.

That's indicative of the European intellectual set's superficial understanding of L.A. sociology, social observance gleaned from James Dean films. Indeed, "The End of Violence" is more a theoretical intellectual construct, albeit one grounded in American B-Movies, than a flesh-and-blood film.

Perhaps realizing their narrow knowledge of Los Angeles, the filmmakers have at least padded their scenario with Hollywood-type stuff.

"Violence" is centered around a sleazy movie producer, Mike Max (Bill Pullman), a smoothball who has garnered a Malibu home and a beautiful, bored wife (Andie MacDowell) through violent T&A projections. The reason Mr. Max is the focus is that he's improbably received a secret FBI file on his E-mail, detailing government's plan to implement their planetarium surveillance project. Winding back and forth between nerdy activities of an anal NASA scientist (Gabriel Byrne) setting up the operation in the planetarium and the predictable activities of a whole slew of prototypical L.A. personages, "The End of Violence" ultimately ends in a heap of confusion. Ultimately, Daniel Benzali, his pate gleaming in the Hollywood sunlight, shows up to deliver an oration that attempts to tie the exposition together: However, such a summation only confirms the half-baked quality of the philosophizing hitherto rendered incomprehensible because of the scatter-gun storytelling.

Overall, Wenders' visualization captures Los Angeles quite well, in the movie sense. All the right shots, from all the right hills. Alas, it all feels artificial and about as real and gritty as a Sorbonne seminar on Southern California. While sociologists and political analysts may chortle at the simplistic polemical posturizing -- we never really get a point of view here -- movie nerds will be delighted with its film-y iconography, including a couple of scenes with director Sam Fuller. But, alas, movie buffs would simply be better off renting a video of "Chinatown" if they want to get a psychological and social sense of L.A. rather than a trip down an intellecturalized memory lane.

THE END OF VIOLENCE

In competition

Ciby 2000

A City Pictures, Road Movies,

Kintop Picures production

A film by Wim Wenders

Producers Nicholas Klein, Deepak Nayar

Director Wim Wenders

Screenwriter Nicholas Klein

Director of photography Pascal Rabaud

Production designer Patricia Norris

Music Ry Cooder

Cast:

Ray Bering Gabriel Byrne

Paige Stockard Andie MacDowell

Cat Tracy Lind

Six K. Todd Freeman

Brice Daniel Benzali

Sheriff Call Marshall Bell

Lowell Lewis John Diehl

Ramon Enrique Castillo

Mathilda Marisol Padilla Sanchez

Claire Rosalind Chao

Doc Block Loren Dean

Zoltan Udo Kier

Running time -- 122 minutes

No MPAA rating...

A wobbly political thriller set against the backdrop of the president's place, "Murder at 1600" serves up uninspired filmmaking and a story line that veers from the subpar to the ridiculous.

Despite a talented on-screen lineup that includes Wesley Snipes, Diane Lane, Alan Alda and Daniel Benzali, this White House whodunit just doesn't deliver. With its release following in such close proximity to the similarly themed and far superior "Absolute Power", expect "Murder at 1600" to generate even less response than the recent Los Angeles elections.

Snipes, who understandably jumped at the opportunity to take a Harrison Ford-type role, hasn't been given much to work with as thinking-guy hero Harlan Regis (wait, the names get worse), a D.C. homicide detective called in to investigate the murder of a woman whose battered body was found in a White House restroom stall.

Given the lack of cooperation from the feds and the president's womanizing son's penchant for smacking around his playmates, the whole affair smells of a coverup, but Regis can't come up with any proof. Enter Nina Chance (Lane), an initially reluctant Secret Service agent who quickly ends up risking her life to help Regis crack the case despite the preventative efforts of her all-seeing boss, Nick Spikings (Benzali).

Alas, everything is not what it seems (at least to the folks on screen), and the murder/frame-up is actually part of a backstairs power struggle designed to oust the ineffectual president (Ronny Cox).

Everything about this extensively shot-in-Toronto production feels artificial or warmed over. Director Dwight Little ("Free Willy 2", "Marked for Death") gives it all a surface slickness, but it just isn't enough to gloss over a script (credited to Wayne Beach and the late David Hodgin) that is riddled with plot holes and questionable character motivations.

While Snipes, Lane, Benzali and Alda (as the president's national security adviser and seeming ally) go through their paces respectably, their standard issue characters haven't been injected with anything vital or rounded enough for the audience to want to invest its identification. Add a barely there turn from Dennis Miller (not his fault) as Regis' seldom-seen partner, and the entire proceedings elicit little more than a "so what" response.

Production values are just OK, although Christopher Young's unmistakably Bernard Herrmann-esque score tries a little too hard to evoke Hitchcock when the elements on the screen only go off half-cocked.

SCHIZOPOLIS

Northern Arts Entertainment

Director-screenwriter-director of photography:Steven Soderbergh

Producer:John Hardy

Editor:Sarah Flack

Music:Cliff Martinez, Joseph Wilkins, Mark Mangini, Harry Garfield

Color/stereo

Cast:

Fletcher Munson:Steven Soderbergh

Mrs. Munson/Attractive Woman No. 2:Betsy Brantley

Elmo Oxygen:David Jensen

Nameless Numberheadman:Eddie Jemison

Right Hand Man:Scott Allen

T. Azimuth Schwitters:Mike Malone

Attractive Woman No. 1:Katherine LaNasa

Running time -- 96 minutes

No MPAA rating...